


La Belle Dame Sans...

by TheSigyn



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-06
Updated: 2015-06-06
Packaged: 2018-04-03 02:33:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,028
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4083355
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSigyn/pseuds/TheSigyn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Listening to Spike as he confessed raw moment after moment of pure emotion, as he basked in the hollow comfort of a false love, made Buffy’s cheeks flush with something other than anger. It was horribly erotic. Buffy discovers the lover robot has recordings of its time with Spike. Now that she really knows how he feels... what exactly is she going to do about it? Nominee Sunnydale Memorial Fanfiction Awards, Round 32, Best Angst, Best Characterization (Spike), Best Episode Rewrite.<br/>Winner, Best Angst-- Spuffy<br/>Best Characterization -- Male (Spike) http://sunnydawards.dragonydreams.com/</p>
            </blockquote>





	La Belle Dame Sans...

**Author's Note:**

> The poem, as referenced in the text, is La Belle Dame Sans Merci, by John Keats.

 

  
    “Did he tell her?” Xander asked. “Did Spike tell Glory about Dawn?”

    Buffy shook her head. “No,” she said. “Dawn’s safe. For now.”

    “And you believe him?”

    Buffy nodded, unwilling to share the details of why. It seemed personal.

    Xander sighed his relief, and picked up his backpack. “He doing okay?”

    “He’s probably fine,” Buffy said, though she was unsure. He really had looked as if he’d been nearly killed.

    “I don’t know. Is there any way of healing a vampire? Other than a slayer’s blood. That... wasn’t a suggestion, I was just remembering....”

    “That only works with poison,” Buffy said coldly.

    “Yeah. Sorry. I was just... wondering.” He paused. “He really was thrashed.”

    Buffy nodded. “Yeah,” she said softly. “See ya.”

    She headed farther into the Magic Box, where Dawn and Willow were helping Anya by sorting new inventory. “You’re safe,” Buffy said to Dawn. Both the girls looked relieved. The bizarre robot sex doll was still lying half across the table.

    “I’m safe,” it said, in a perky monotone.

    Buffy jumped. “You fixed it?” she asked of Willow, horrified.

    “No, you twisted some wires when you changed its clothes,” Willow said.

    “So, it talks now?”

    “Yeah, but it still can’t move. All motor functions below neck level are still deactivated. So. What are we going to do with it?” Willow asked.

    “I don’t know yet,” Buffy said. “We’re _not_ giving it back to Spike.”

    “Spike?” the robot asked. “Where is Spike? I have to find Spike.” Buffy made a face, and Willow smirked.

    “Well, I have midterms to study for,” Willow said. “I should get back to Tara. Anya asked us to lock up, think you can handle that?”

    “Yeah,” Buffy said.

    “Well, I’ll just leave you to it, then.” She gathered up her things and headed toward the door.

    “I need Spike,” the robot said.

    “Wait!” Buffy called out. “How do I turn this thing off?”

    “I’m not sure,” Willow said, in an amused tone that led Buffy to believe she wasn’t being wholly honest. “I’ll tell you tomorrow.”

    “I need to find Spike,” the robot said again.

    Dawn laughed. “I’d help you, but this is funny.”

    The machine disturbed Buffy, and she didn’t want to discuss it with Dawn. “You, home,” Buffy said.

    Dawn scoffed in the incredulous manner of fourteen year olds everywhere. “It’s early!”

    “And you have school at eight in the morning, and homework, I’m sure. Home. Schoolwork. Bed.”

    Dawn rolled her eyes, but she headed off, still chuckling as the robot asked, “Do you know where Spike is? I need to find Spike. Can you tell me where Spike is? I’m looking for Spike.”

    “Shut up.”

    “I need to find Spike,” the machine continued.

    Buffy turned to it and tried to open its back panel like Willow had, but she couldn’t figure out how the catch worked in the flesh colored tegument. “Would you tell me where Spike is? I need to find Spike. Spike needs me,” the robot continued.

    “Spike needs you like he needs a hole in the head,” Buffy snapped. “Or maybe in the chest.”

    “Spike has seven holes in his head,” the robot said sensibly. “Though two of them have eyes in them.”

    Buffy blinked, and then went back to trying to find the off switch.

    “He doesn’t have a hole in his chest, though,” it continued. “I can’t stake him. I could never stake him.”

    “Well, I have news for you,” Buffy said. “I already did once.”

    “He excites me. And he needs me.”

    “I keep telling you, he only needs you as a creepy receptacle for his creepy obsession.”

    “Spike needs me to hold him,” the robot said.

    Buffy paused. “One part of him, maybe.”

    “No. All of him. And he needs to hold me.”

    “He just wants to have sex with you.”

    “We do that, yes, we do,” the robot said. “Fourteen percent of our interaction has been sexual.”

    That did make Buffy pause. “Fourteen percent?”

    “Yes,” the machine said with a truly charming smile.

    “Only fourteen?”

    “Yes,” the machine said simply. “Ten percent has been fighting. Thirty percent of the time, Spike has been sleeping, and the remaining forty-six percent has been conversational, or snuggling, or both.”

    Buffy was simply bewildered. “Spike wanted you to _snuggle_?”

   “Yes,” the robot said. “Spike is very romantic.”

   Buffy was more inclined to believe that sentiment the programed belief of a delusional sex robot than the actual behavior of the violent and sarcastic vampire she’d known for so long. “Right.”

   “Yes,” the machine said. “And he loves me.”

   “That’s not love,” Buffy said. “That’s obsession.”

   “And I love him,” the robot continued, oblivious. “I love him, and he excites me, and he terrifies me, and I know he is evil, but I cannot help myself. He is so darkly seductive, and dangerously alluring.”

   “And disgustingly revolting.” 

   “No. Spike is wonderful.”

   “He wanted a sex robot so that he could get off on some kinky porno program.”

   “No. I’m not supposed to use the word program.”

   “What do you mean, not supposed to?” Buffy asked.

   The robot opened her mouth, but instead of the perky monotone of her clipped syntax, a completely different and utterly unrobotic voice came from her lips. “ _No_.” Spike’s voice came through as if through a tape recorder, a perfect replica, soft and pained. “ _No programs. Don’t use that word. Just be Buffy._ ”

   Buffy was taken aback. “W...what was that?”

   “That was what Spike said to me,” the Buffy robot said. “Just after he bit me on the neck.”

   Involuntarily, Buffy glanced at the robot’s throat, but there were no teeth marks. “You’re made of some pretty tough tegument.”

   “Oh, no. He was very gentle,” the robot said. “ _You know I can’t bite you,_ ” she continued in Spike’s voice, so soft it was barely audible. Then jumping back to her own, she said, “I think you can. I think you can if I let you. And I wanna let you. I want you to bite me and devour me until there’s no more.” “ _Like this?_ ” 

   “Stop!” Buffy said. The tone of Spike’s voice was far too intimate. “Wait, you mean... You’ve recorded your interactions?”

    “I have over one thousand hours of blank audio recording available,” the robot said. “I was activated less than forty-seven hours ago. If I am requested to remember something someone said, I will have the audio on file for up to one month. I have not yet had to delete any conversations that I have had with Spike.”

    “You have forty-seven hours of audio of you and Spike...” Buffy was trying to find some way of saying, “having sex” without right out saying it, but the robot only assumed the words at face value.

    “Me and Spike, and Xander, and Willow, and Buffy, and Guyles, and vampires and...”

    “And you’ve recorded all this,” Buffy said.

    “Yes. Would you like me to play back any interaction?”

    “No!” Buffy said. “I don’t want to hear you and Spike going at it.”

    “Parameters set. No sexual encounters under search parameters. Select audio file?”

    “Wha... n-no...”

    “Audio file one, selected,” the robot said, mishearing Buffy’s confusion. “Spike!” A brief pause was followed by Spike’s voice, pleased and bit bemused. “ _She’ll do._ ”

    “I’m so glad to see you, you buff hunk of sexy hotness!”

    “ _Hey, hey, wait. Wait. That’s not–_ ”

    “What do you want me to wait for, Spike?”

    “ _Hey, Warr – he’s gone._ ”

    “Of course he’s gone. Anyone would run from a deadly vampire like you.”

    “ _Oh._ ” Spike’s voice sounded pleased. “ _Hm. So you do have all the... things I asked for then? The slayer things, and...._ ”

    “Give me a pointy stick, and set me at ‘em,” the Buffy robot said perkily.

    “ _Show me_.” There was the sound of breaking wood, and Spike’s voice continued with a heady amusement that brought his smile right into Buffy’s imagination. “ _Oh. Think you’ll get the better of me, eh, slayer?_ ”

    “You don’t frighten me.”

    “ _Don’t I? What if I were to..._ ”

    “Ooh! Oh, Spike! Don’t hurt me.”

    “Oh, puh-leese!” the real Buffy groaned. “Stop. I get the point. Creepy vamp wants to beat me.”

    “No. Spike wants me to win.”

    “What? What do you mean?”

    “Audio file twelve, selected,” the robot said. Spike’s voice broke out almost instantly. “ _You still can’t do it?_ ”

    “I don’t want to.”

    “ _Yes, you do. You always do_.”

    The robot seemed to hesitate, and then the sound of clattering wood echoed in the distance, as if someone had just thrown away a stake. “I can’t!” the robot said.

    _“Do it!”_

   “I can’t do it. You’re evil, I know you’re evil, and I should slay you.”

  _“Then why haven’t you?”_

   “I don’t know.”

  _“I want you to,”_ he said, the voice losing its playful artifice, becoming almost seductive in tone. _“I keep waiting for you to. End this right, I say. Pierce me through the heart proper, no more of this endless aching torture.”_  

   “But then you’d be gone.”

   There was a brief chuckle, and a rustle, probably the sound of bedsprings. “ _And where would be the tragedy in that, love?_ ”

   “I’d miss you.”

   Another chuckle. _“Improve your aim.”_

   “Recording parameters reached,” the robot said. 

   Buffy was stunned. “Spike wants me to kill him?” 

   “Sometimes.” 

   “Are you serious? He wasn’t just joking, or...?”

    “Would you like to hear audio file twenty-two?”

    “Is that the same subject?”

    The robot seemed to think. “The files are cross referenced.”

    “Then yes,” Buffy said. This was important. If Spike really was suicidal, then it explained the beating by Glory more realistically than wanting to protect Dawn or Buffy. And knowing that was... was important.

    “Did I hurt you?” the robot asked.

    “ _Not so much as you usually do_.”

    “I’m sorry. Would you like me to run that scenario again?”

    A frustrated grunt came from Spike’s voice. “ _No._ ” A sigh. “ _That wasn’t what I meant, anyway._ ”

    “What did you mean?”

   _“I mean you hurt me every day just by breathing in and out,”_ he said _. “Lovely thing. Though you’d hurt me even more if you stopped.”_

    “I don’t understand.”

     _“I love you,”_ Spike said quietly. _“It hurts. I wish I could stop it. Sometimes I go out of the lair in the daylight, and just lurk in the doorway, just in the shadows, watching myself scorch in the sun. But I always go inside before I start to smoke.... I guess the demon in me wants to live more than whatever’s human wants to die. I’m always hurting, you pretty thing. Sometimes I long to just beat you, in the hopes you’d hit me back hard enough to knock it all out of me. Sometimes when you hurt me proper, you make me forget that other stuff. I wish I could just stake the feelings out of my heart. I always figure if you just did it for me... there’d be no war about it.”_

    “I don’t want you to die.”

     _“Well then,_ ” Spike said with a smile in his voice. “ _I suppose that’s decided, isn’t it, pet?_ ” There was a brief pause. _“I love you.”_

    “I love you too, Spike.”

    A whisper. “ _I love you.”_

    “I love you too, Spike.”

   _“Shut up. Don’t talk, just let me... I love you, Summers, I love you....”_

    The words were so hopeless and so empty.  Buffy felt very uncomfortable. She found it strange – even difficult at the moment – to admit that she could love. It seemed like the opposite side of the same coin for Spike to find any kind of pleasure or release in just saying it over and over and over again to a technically empty room. “ _I love you,_ ” Spike said again, the tone even more hopeless.

    “Spike?” The robot’s voice had turned concerned. “Why are you sad?”

    There was a long, long pause, and the only sound within it was a short sigh ... Buffy refused to believe it was a sob.

    “Spike? Don’t be sad, Spike. I’m here.”

     _“No you’re not,”_ he whispered. The sound of another breath. “ _God, I wish you were. Oh, god, yes. Don’t let go.”_ He sighed again, deeper, resigned. “ _I know how pathetic this is. Playing games with a bloody doll while you’re out there, grieving and alone and scared, and there’s nothing I can do about it. I wish you’d let me take care of you. I’m good at taking care of people. I took care of Dru for a century, and all I got in exchange were ravings and nonsense. But I could take care of you. I could soothe away those nightmares I hear you moan with outside your window. I could rub those aches away. I could guard your back from the demons, and tell your friends when they’re being wankers. I could keep an eye on your little sis, so you wouldn’t have to worry so much. I could blind your grief with pleasure and kiss all your tears away if you’d let me.”_

    “Of course I’ll let you, Spike. You can take care of me.”

    He laughed, low and hopeless. _“Not quite the same,”_ he said. _“But I guess you’ll have to do. I just wish you smelled right.”_

    “I love you, Spike.”

    A pause, and then again. “ _You’ll have to do_.”

    “End of sadness intervention program,” the Buffy robot continued. “Would you like to hear another interaction?”

    Buffy had been lulled by Spike’s lament, and the bot’s loud, brusque voice grated on her nerves. Spike’s voice had been so soft, so touching, an offer of such genuine... well, love, that she was almost jealous of the robot. It wasn’t that she really wanted Spike, she told herself, it was that she wanted to want him. She almost wished she could sink herself into the robot’s inhuman mind space where Spike really was everything she wanted. Because if he was, everything she was hearing was so genuine and so sweet, it felt tempting.

    “Uh... sure,” Buffy said.

    “ _The thing is, you’re like the sun._ ” Spike’s voice was soft, wistful. “ _These lips... your eyes... your hair. Your laugh, your grace, the way you fight, the burr in your voice when you lose your temper. Unh, the sharp sting of your strikes. So bright and so beautiful, so completely blinding. You shed light on everything around you, shocking the trees into emerald and the sky to sapphire._ ” He sounded quite poetic, really. _“You turn even blood into rubies so dazzling I wouldn’t dare touch them. But when I get anywhere near you, I start to burn. I burn and burn like I’m already in hell, and I want it so badly, but I can’t... can’t ever be a part of your sunlight.”_

    He paused, and his voice changed, from wistful to heady. “ _I don’t even have the fantasy of bringing you down with me into velvet darkness._ ” Then he chuckled. “ _Well, I have it. Sometimes my teeth ache with the thought of biting you..., drinking you, draining you, the hot blood flowing over my tongue in a gushing waterfall of your very essence. Then... to have you drink. To feel that bite of pain, and have me become you as you became me, until we’re one, locked, forever, and the taste of you as you change from slayer to vampire in my arms._ ” He sighed. “ _But that’s where it always falls. ‘Cause you won’t be you if you’re not the slayer. Even having you in my arms forever, immortal beside me in darkness. It’s beautiful, but it’s not you. And you... you have to be you for it to be anything at all._ ” A chuckle that was almost a sob made Buffy flinch. “ _Would you just hold me really tight?_ ”

    “Is that tight enough?” the robot asked.

    “ _Hurt me,_ ” he said, with a snarl in his voice.

    “Better?”

    “ _Mm._ ” A sound that was half sigh of relief and half grunt of pain reached Buffy’s ears. “ _Yes,_ ” Spike said gruffly. “All further interactions are silent, until stipulated playback parameters are reached,” the robot said, shocking Buffy out of the images the recording had been invoking. She supposed that meant the hurting had devolved into sex.

    “Would you like to play back another interaction?” the robot continued.

    Buffy lifted her hand in agitation, and discovered it was shaking. Something about the purity of these moments was affecting her in a way she didn’t like. She knew if she had allowed the robot to continue, if she’d permitted any of these scenarios to develop as they seemed to be developing, into baldly pornographic detail, that she’d be disgusted, horrified, probably nauseated. But as it was, untainted by lust, listening to Spike as he confessed raw moment after moment of pure emotion, as he basked in the hollow comfort of a false love, made Buffy’s cheeks flush was something other than anger. It was horribly erotic.

    “Yes,” she said, automatically. Then, “No.” Then, “Yes,” again. “I don’t know.”

    “I would like to replay another. May I replay another? I like to listen to Spike, and I cannot find Spike. Do you know where Spike is?”

    “You’re not going back to Spike.”

    “Not ever?” The machine sounded so sad.

    Buffy frowned. She’d felt sympathy for the last lover robot that had landed in her lap. Why did this one deserve any less? “Not right now,” she said gently. She’d tell it that it was going to Spike before she had Willow turn it off in the morning. That would make it happy.

    “Then can I replay another audio file? I like to listen to Spike.”

    “Go ahead,” Buffy whispered.

    “ _Just, please. Don’t leave the lair without me, okay?_ ”

    “Well, why?”

    “ _I don’t really want you bothering Buffy’s friends._ ”

    “But they’re my friends.”

    Spike sounded exasperated. “ _Sort of,_ ” he said. “ _It’s... complicated. They’re not going to be happy about... this.”_

    “You want to keep me a secret.”

    “ _Oh, yeah,_ ” Spike said, without a doubt in his tone.

    “How come?”

    “ _Because they’re not going to understand, pet. This town is just... it’s better if, while we’re here, we don’t get in anybody’s way. So we just... keep us a secret, okay?”_

    “Then, why are we here?”

    “ _What do you mean?_ ”

    “If we have to stay secret here, why don’t we go some place else?”

    Spike laughed. “ _Trust me. I’ve asked myself the same question a thousand times._ ”

    “So, why do you stay?”

    “ _Oh, tell me why you sojourn here, alone and palely loitering,_ ” Spike said sardonically.

    “What’s that?”

    “ _Oh. It’s a poem._ ”

    “A poem?” The robot sounded incredibly interested. “Tell me!” The robot begged. “Tell me, tell me!”

    “ _Oh..., yeah. I forgot about that program._ ”

    “My poetry appreciation file?”

    “ _God, I must have been drunk when I asked for that one._ ”

    “Will you tell me?”

    Spike’s laugh was amused, and slightly embarrassed.

    “Pleeease?”

    “ _Fine,_ ” Spike said, still chuckling. “ _Anything for you, doll._ ”

    To Buffy’s shock, Spike’s sardonic working class accent came out softened into the cadence of poetry. She knew she’d heard the poem somewhere, but only with half her attention. She’d spent her early life intentionally kind of ditzy, she knew, and now that she was the slayer she spent it with only half of herself in the real world, and the other half with a stake in her hand and the fate of humanity before her. Poetry was not her strong suit. The poem went on for several verses – it was a strange an unearthly thing, about a fairy or something, but some of the verses sounded very vampiric.

    “ _I saw pale kings and princes too/ Pale warriors, death-pale were they all;_ ” Spike’s voice said. The words coming from a vampire made her skin crawl – not altogether unpleasantly, she was annoyed to discover. “ _They cried—“La Belle Dame sans Merci/ Hath thee in thrall! /I saw their starved lips in the gloam,/  With horrid warning gaped wide, /And I awoke and found me here,/On the cold hill’s side.”_

    There was a long pause as Spike finished, and Buffy wondered briefly if that was all the robot would share. Buffy herself had actually been caught in the brief lines.

    “That’s beautiful,” the robot said at last.

    “ _Yeah. That was always Dru’s favorite._ ”

    “Did you write that?”

    “ _Of course!_ ” Spike said, with a smile in his voice. “ _No, that was Keats._ ”

    “But you were a poet.”

    A rueful chuckle. “ _A long time ago._ ”

    “What were some of your poems?”

    “ _Don’t remember,_ ” Spike said so quickly that Buffy wasn’t sure he was telling the truth.

    “You could tell me one.”

    “ _I told you, I don’t remember._ ”

    “You could write a new one.”

    There was a long pause in the recording. “ _I think you need a soul for that sort of caper, love._ ”

    “I think you have a soul,” the robot said loyally.

    “ _No you don’t, and shut up!_ ” Spike said sharply. There was a long pause as the robot obeyed, having learned to stop and listen when Spike wanted her quiet. Then, after a moment, the robot’s sadness intervention program activated again. “Don’t be sad, Spike,” it said. “There’s a light at the end of the tunnel.”

    “ _What?_ ”

    “When life gives you lemons, make lemonade.”

    “ _Excuse me?_ ”

    “Every cloud has a silver lining.” The words were trite, as helpless as a broken record as the machine flipped through cliches, desperate to find something to cheer him.

    There was a heavy sigh, and then Spike spoke up. “ _It’s not your fault, sweetheart,_ ” he said kindly. “ _Com’ere._ ” Buffy could imagine him pulling the machine into his lap. She wondered if it was running its fingers through his hair, or nuzzling his neck, or... “ _You know, I never missed being human when I was still a vampire,_ ” he confessed. “ _Still a proper vampire,_ ” he amended. “ _Now I’m all... tangled. It wasn’t until I lost all the joy of death and pain and blood that I started missing what joy I used to have.... I think I had joy. I must ‘ave. I just... I can’t find any of it now.”_

    “Can I bring you joy?”

    There was a long pause, and Buffy was sure it was a kiss, or a warm hug, or... she had to stop thinking about this. “ _Solace,_ ” Spike finally said. “ _Just bring me solace. I’m so tired of being alone. I’m just...._ ” He trailed off.

    “Don’t be sad, Spike.”

    “ _I always had someone, you know,_ ” Spike said quietly. “ _Dru, someone. I don’t really know how to be alone._ ”

    “You’re not alone. You have me,” the robot said.

    There was a heavy pause. “ _I love you, Buffy,_ ” Spike whispered. The words were so pained Buffy involuntarily winced.

    “I love you too, Spike.”

    The cold and mechanical way the robot said those words made Buffy want to hit it. The robot’s job was to help, not throw the whole hopeless situation into stark relief! “Shut up,” she told it, in a tone not unlike the one Spike had used. She stood up and started pacing the floor. “God damn you,” she muttered at the robot. Then, “God damn Spike!” She didn’t say it, but she knew she had no one but herself to blame for the horrible way she was feeling now. If she’d read someone’s diary, she would have expected to find out things she didn’t want to know, and this was probably more intimate, more personal, and infinitely more evocative. She shouldn’t have encouraged the robot to share. It was like she’d opened a pure crystal window into Spike’s tortured existence, and she did not at all like what she saw.

    Not one bit.

    So, she asked herself. What was she going to do about it?

    As always, her first step was to ask Giles.

***  
  
    Spike’s platinum blond head was still resting, unmoved, upon the stone sarcophagus where Buffy had left him the evening before. She closed the door on the rising sun and went up to him. “Get up.”

    Spike’s least damaged eye flickered open and he tried to find her in the dim light of his lair. “Buffy?”

    “Get up.”

    “I’ve tried a few times,” he said. “I’ve just decided to be friends with this slab for now.”

    “You won’t heal if you’re playing the corpse.”

    “Pretty easy to do for the undead, love.”

    “Come on. I had Giles dig up a recipe for a poultice for you. It’ll hurt you like hell, and heal you up faster. I think you deserve it.”

    “Which bit?”

    “Both,” Buffy said with a smirk.

    Spike tried to sit up, but his bruises had deepened, and he was probably in more pain now than he’d been just after his torture session with Glory. Buffy rolled her eyes, but she helped him to stand, him leaning on her shoulders. “Don’t read anything into this, blood boy,” she snapped.

    “Who, me?” Spike asked. “Wouldn’t dream of it.”

    “I think we both know that’s a lie. Come on. Do you have _anything_ soft in this hell-hole?”

    He hesitated, and then said, “Downstairs.”

    Buffy rolled her eyes. “Right.” It would have to be in that dank hole he’d chained her in before. Buffy half dragged, half carried him deeper into his lair to a bed in a mussed state she didn’t want to think too closely about. She dropped him into it heavily, and he groaned with pain. Buffy yanked off his shoes, but that was as far she would ever go undressing Spike, and she tossed the blankets over his legs with a gesture of annoyance. Without ceremony she poured a hefty dollop of the thick poultice on a rag of cloth and slapped it down through the holes in his ragged shirt onto the worst of Spike’s wounds.

    He screamed, his face changing to darkness in reaction. “Jesus, you nutter!” he shouted, slapping her hand away instinctually, followed by a second grunt of pain as the chip in his head sent a shock through his already tortured body. “Ow...ah...ah....” Every muscle in his body was tense. He shuddered as he cringed, almost in foetal position, completely fazed by the pain.

    Buffy waited until he seemed to be breathing normally again, his face again human and his teeth retracted. Then she set him back, not ungently. “Just try and endure it,” she said softly with her hands on his shoulders. “It really will help.”

    Spike looked pained, then annoyed, then resigned. “Fine,” he muttered. Buffy lay the cloth back down. He hissed with the pain, but he did not try to slap her away again. “What is in that stuff?” he grunted through clenched teeth.

    “Garlic,” Buffy said.

    “ _What?_ ”

    “Just a little. Veal blood, garlic, some yew sap, a lot of bluebell, a little powdered amethyst, and some beeswax to make it stick. It’s the garlic that’s hurting you. Your body’s trying to avoid it, and sends all the little vampy stuff to get rid of it, and when it gets there it takes in the bluebell and the blood, which are what makes it heal. Bluebell, rebirth of the dead. But it wouldn’t do jack without the garlic, since you don’t normally have a circulatory system. So suffer.”

    He took a deep breath, and was unable to keep himself from shuddering with it. “Couldn’t the ancient council guys have come up with something less painful?”

    “I think any vampire they were trying to heal they were in the process of torturing,” Buffy said. “So, I don’t think that was a top priority for them.”

    “Ung,” Spike said, but he started to relax. Giles had said that the intense pain turned numbing after a while.

    “How are the bones?”

    “Broken,” Spike said. “Rib, collar bone, half my right hand.”

    “If you’re willing to make a cast of this stuff, it might help. It’ll stimulate the circulation beneath the skin, but it’ll give you hives if you leave it too long. I’ll leave the jar, let you decide.”

    “Thanks. Self administered torture. Just what I always wanted.”

    “Hey, when these wounds close up by tomorrow, you’ll be glad of it.”

    “I’m already glad of it,” Spike said, a little woozily. “I’m starting to feel like I ate a junkie.” He opened his eyes as he realized what he’d said. “Sorry.”

    “I know what you are, Spike,” Buffy said. “I’m here because you protected Dawn.”

    He sighed and looked away. Buffy had an impulse. She lifted one finger and gently caressed his temple, just at the hairline. He looked back, the pain in his eyes no longer coming from his injured flesh. “Please don’t do that,” he said. A second later he followed up with, “Unless you want to do it a lot, in which case, go for it.”

    “It was a kiss, Spike. Barely a kiss. Not a prenuptial agreement. And it’s all you’re getting.”

    He closed his eyes and nodded, and Buffy pulled out the other object from her backpack. A wooden stake was tangled in the cloth, but she peeled that off and shoved it back inside. A second later she had set a largish white teddy bear on the edge of Spike’s bed. He blinked at it in bewilderment. “What’s that?” he asked with obvious distaste. “A sacrifice for the gods?”

    “This is Mister Bibbles,” Buffy said, looking down on the bear, her face guarded. “I’m not actually sure where I got him. I might have won him in a fair when I was four or five, or he might have been holding a Christmas present or something. Anyway, I’ve had him since I was little. I never really liked him much,” she added, looking up at Spike. “I never brought him to sleep overs and he didn’t feature when I played games and he never – he _never_ – slept with me. Never.” She added. “Never. Not ever.”

    Spike blinked, and raised his least damaged eyebrow, but let her continue. “Mostly he just sat at the edge of my tea table and was just... there. But I never got rid of him,” she said. “And when I moved to Sunnydale I carefully packed him up with all my favorite dolls and toys and... I pulled him out and put him on a shelf. ‘Cause he belonged there.” She opened her mouth as if she was about to say something, and then changed her mind.

    “I just thought you might like something to hold onto. Something that smelled ri...right,” she finished, realizing as she said it that she’d gone one sentence too far.

    Spike’s entire demeanor changed as horrified realization crept into his face. “I thought you said you’d destroyed it!”

    “It’s gone, it’s done,” Buffy said. “I’m sorry, I–”

    “What did she tell you?” he demanded. “Never mind,” he added. “I already know it was too much. Bugger.” He lay there for a moment in a fit of pure embarrassment, his hand over his battered face. “Bloody hell.” He groaned and then lowered his hand, trying to compose himself. Buffy knew he was embarrassed that they knew the robot existed in the first place – this was probably a crushing blow. “It wasn’t supposed to be like this,” he said distinctly. “It wasn’t supposed to get out, it–”

    “It’s... all right,” Buffy said. “I mean it was disgusting and obscene but...”

    “What did you want me to do?” Spike asked, his voice no longer controlled. “I can’t stop this. God knows, I’d slice it out of me if I could. Even if it hurt worse than this, I’d bloody do it. But I’m stuck with it. I can’t even distract myself, you’re in me all the time, you won’t... bloody... _leave. Everything_ reminds me of you, you’re a disease. You don’t want me pursuing you or... or stalking you like Angel used to, so I’m not.”  He shook his head. “I can’t kill, I can’t maim, I’ve got nothing else to draw my attention.” He glared at her. “It’s all your fault, you know. You’re a slayer, damn you. Every vampire in the world is going to be fixated on you one way or another. If I can’t want to kill you, what have I got left? This sick, twisted _thing_ that just won’t go away.” He shook his head and looked away from her. “I was just... trying to stop _hurting_. It wasn’t supposed to get out. It wasn’t supposed to bother anyone. It was for me. It took the edge off, so I could leave you alone.” He rubbed his damaged face. “Leave you alone, like you wanted.” His last words were so pained, she was hard pressed not to touch him again. It wouldn’t have been fair to either of them if she had.

    “You don’t have to leave me alone,” Buffy said instead. He looked up at her. “Look, I can’t stop you from fantasizing. Or m–” her mouth caught on the word, and she blushed, “more of whatever. Everyone’s mind is their own, and... you don’t really need a robot to do that kind of thing, anyway. I may find it disgusting, but it doesn’t actually hurt me. And I’m perfectly willing to beat you up when you deserve it,” she said, not meeting his eyes. “I even talk to you... when you’re the best person to talk to about something. So that’s, like, half of what she did for you, anyway, right? And I figured....” She twisted the bear a little with her hand, so it half looked at her. “I can’t give you what you want. I can’t, and I’m not required to. It’s your problem, not mine, you hear me?”

    “I never said it was yours.”

    Buffy swallowed. “But if... if all you want’s something to hold, I figured it made sense. I mean, I want that sometimes. And... well, a teddy bear’s not creepy. I mean, I still hug bears. You’re hurt, people give bears in hospitals all the time I just... I thought....” She shook her head. “Unless you don’t want it, think it’s not _Spiky_ enough, I can just take it ho–”

    Spike lifted his hand and took hold of the bear’s leg. “I want it,” he said evenly.

    He wasn’t lying. His nose was half blocked from being hit in the face – which was why he hadn’t realized it was really Buffy and not the robot until she’d kissed him – but he could already smell her on the fur. Aged and dusty it was, but it had been in her room, amongst her things, steeped in her scent for a decade. “I want it.”

    “I always felt the same way about him,” Buffy said. “Never really knew why. I never liked him much. I just wanted him around.” She stood up. “Get better, Spike.”

    She turned to leave.

    “Buffy?”

    She turned back.

    “Don’t tell anyone what she said. Any of it.” He looked up at her. “Please.”

    “I won’t,” she said. “I know it was meant to be private. I shouldn’t have listened at all.”

    Spike dropped a single laugh and shook his head. “I was talking to you, anyway,” he said, almost to himself. He turned his back to her, his hand on the white bear.

    Buffy swallowed, telling herself it was just the garlic and bluebells making him blurry in the head. She left.

    Then she popped her head back in. “Creepy robot toys aside, you weren’t doing anything truly disgusting with that blond wigged manikin you had hanging around, were you?”

    Spike looked over at her. “I liked to hit it,” he said, not entirely untruthfully.

    “Ah,” said Buffy. “Fair enough.” And she left.

    A moment later, Spike lifted his head. “Buffy?” he asked. She was gone. He asked again. “Buffy?” Nope. She wasn’t coming back. Good.

    Maybe hugging a teddy bear wasn’t creepy. He was fairly sure she’d be pretty disgusted by this. With a sigh of relief he dragged the bear to his head, opened his jaws, and sank his teeth into the fabric. It filled his mouth with true satisfaction, and tasted of dust and fabric and laundry soap and faintly, ever so faintly, of the slayer. When he opened his mouth it was with the softness of a child about to sleep. “I love you,” he whispered to the velvet darkness.

    There was no reply.

  


 


End file.
